Defence of the realm

Seamus MacDonald, who has sheep and corn on 20 acres near the shore, gestures to a low sandy bank bearing the scars of severe erosion. ``All that's stopping a big tide coming in all the way to our houses is this little bit of ground here. If the sea were to break in at all, this is where it will happen.''

The slate-grey ocean is calm, rippling into tidal pools and over rocks strewn with seaweed. But Mr MacDonald recalls vividly the frenzy of winter storms: ``When you've got a westerly gale coupled with a lunar tide, that's when you've got trouble. Believe me, it's frightening when you see these big whitecaps coming at you, and the spray flying over the machair. Awesome is the only word I can think of.''

Mr MacDonald and his neighbours have grounds for concern. More than half of the beaches in the Outer Hebrides are suffering from erosion, with up to a metre of land being lost every year in some areas. For more than 20 years the Scottish Office Agriculture and Fisheries Department has been battling to counter spectacular wind-blown erosion of sand dunes in Barra that threatened to cut the island in two.

To make matters worse, scientists are now suggesting that sea levels in the area are rising twice as fast as the global average, up to 4.5mm a year. The conclusion is that the islands are getting smaller, and the people who live on them are getting worried.

Their principal concern is not natural erosion, which has been occurring in cycles for centuries, but the danger it poses for weakened coastal defences in severe weather. This was graphically illustrated on January 5, 1993, the night

the Braer went aground in Shetland, when the Western Isles were lashed by a westerly force 12 storm that coincided with unusually high spring tides. A three-metre belt of sand dunes disappeared overnight along the length of the west coasts

of the Uists and

Benbecula. When the sea receded, residents found almost 100 miles of coastline had been radically altered. Mr MacDonald remembers that night. He points to some large rocks by a path, about 20 metres inland from the beach, and says: ``See these stones? They were buoyant. We were just lucky it didn't come any further.'' Across the machair, a road lined with croft houses lies barely half a mile away.

A few miles to the south, a section of the road to Ludag and the ferry terminal for Eriskay was washed away. A nearby inn is now protected by a massive concrete seawall.

Erosion and storm damage

is apparent all along the battered beaches of the Southern Isles. Mr MacDonald stands above a huge cavity like a quarry in the sand dunes, and says: ``When I was a boy we called this the big dune, and we used to run over the top of it.

Now it's the big hollow.''

The depression, known tech-

nically as a ``blowout'', is a

classic example of strong winds and high seas carving through natural coastal barriers.

Nearby lie the ruins of a wood and turf hide, built by a gamekeeper to shoot crows and ravens. It is well above the normal high tide mark, but it looks as if a bomb had hit it. Mr MacDonald says another hide was swept away by a big tide. He concludes: ``It's a true saying, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. There's been a lot of talking done about it over the years, but nothing is being done that I'm aware of.''

In fact quite a lot is being done, by Scottish Natural Heritage and others, to study the problem and develop ways of dealing with it, but evidently not enough to reassure crofters who are losing land every year.

Ronald MacKinnon, a branch official of the Scottish Crofters' Union in South Uist, accuses various authorities of passing the buck. In particular he blames South Uist Estates, the principal landowner, for stripping shingle from the beaches in the sixties and seventies for roads construction. ``They went berserk with their machines, taking away an important element of coastal defences. They have a lot to answer for.''

The Western Isles Council has made no financial provision

for erosion, and says it

can consider work only where property such as roads or graveyards is threatened. This is little comfort to Mr MacKinnon, who can see heavy seas breaking on the shore during storms from his kitchen window a mile and a half away. ``Nearly every crofting township has a weak point. If the sea finds its way in, it will just keep coming and nothing will stop it. Everybody agrees it's bad and dangerous, and something should be done, but nothing happens.''

In fact, things have been worse, notably in recent centuries. Historical records are full of accounts of catastrophic indundations by sea and sand, of huge areas of land lost and

of townships virtually buried by sandstorms. In 1764, an observer described the west coast of south Uist as a ``dead plain ... the shore is fenced with vast banks of blowing Sand, with which the whole Country

is flooded

in Time of Storms. This Sandy Deluge is of the ut-most Detriment here, as it is indeed along all the West coasts

of the long Island, and

no effectual means have ever been used to restrain its Devastation.''

Such evidence of the cyclical nature of erosion allows experts like John Love, the area officer of SNH for the Uists and Barra, to take a philosophical view. ``Erosion and wind-blow is a feature of this place, and it has been for centuries. We think we might be back at 1840s in the cycle, but we are still trying to find out how wide the fluctuations are. There is natural recovery, but it takes such a long time to happen that crofters are not aware of it.''

There are situations, however, that require urgent remedial action. When erosion began to affect a missile firing range on South Uist, the Ministry of Defence tried to protect the facility with terraces of gabions (wire cages filed with boulders). The

wind and the sea were not impressed by this puny barrier, and promptly crept around it, causing it to collapse into huge blowholes. The MoD then installed the gabions in a shallow gradient, covered with sand and gravel, and planted at strategic points with marram grass, which is the best-known agent for binding loose sand. The result has been so far, so good.

Wherever possible, conservation agencies prefer to use ``soft'' rather than ``hard'' engineering - partly because it looks better, and more to the point because it often works better. Says John Love: ``It's easy to take the JCB approach and wade in and think you're doing something useful, but it can backfire. I don't think anybody wants a concrete barrier all the way up the Uists. We don't want to stop erosion, which is a natural process, we just want to balance recovery with damage.''

Given the necessary funds, he would have experts identify specific weak spots, then plant marram grass and encourage its growth with seaweed and dung. This selective approach has already worked well in controlling major blowouts in South Uist and Harris, but the problem is so widespread that no single organisation can tackle it alone. Mr Love would like to see a forum of the various agencies putting together a major recovery package, and training local ``hit-squads'' to reinforce the most vulnerable points. He suggests this would be a worthy scheme for European funding.

But he admits: ``With global warming, maybe we're just tickling the problem. The shingle beach, so long as it's not tampered with, should provide adequate defence in most conditions. But if the seas are rising, who can predict the worst scenario? All I can do is put my faith in the cyclical nature of it all, and hope for a few mild winters for the defences to build again.''

On the little island of Berneray, across a tidal channel from North Uist, crofter Donald MacKillop would like more tangible assurances that his land is not going to disappear in the next big storm. The island is little more than three miles long by two miles wide, and it is getting smaller all the time due to erosion of both its east and west coasts.

``We are being eaten from both sides, like a candle burning at both ends,'' Mr MacKillop says. ``We are short of land as it is, and the sea is coming in every year, there's nothing surer than that.''

Berneray offers classic examples of misguided attempts to stem the tides of erosion. On the west coast, a huge blowout is strewn with the debris of bales of silage dumped in a futile bid to keep out the wind and waves. On the east coast, rubble defences near a youth hostel have been battered away and now litter what remains of the beach.

On one side, Mr MacKillop points to an expanse of sand about 30 metres from the machair, and says: ``I've seen me playing football there as a boy, when it was grass.''

On the other, he stands beside a bank of machair less than a metre high, with common grazing land in a dip behind it, and says: ``If the sea was to break in here, goodness knows where it would end.''

With more co-operation between the concerned parties, this might not happen. Without it, the people of the Western Isles will just have to hope for a mild winter.

If the worst comes to the worst, they could always gather on an 87-metre hill in South Uist called Reuval. It is known locally as the Hill of Miracles.

Stormy island history

n ACCOUNTS of severe erosion in the Outer Hebrides date back to the early sixteenth century, when the rental of North Uist was reduced by two or three ``merk-lands'' due to encroachment by the sea, an event which was repeated in 1721.

Other recorded incidents include:

1697 - A great storm caused considerable damage to fertile areas from South Harris to North Uist, resulting in reductions in the annual rentals in Lingay (Pabbay), Berneray and Luskentyre. Damage in Pabbay was so severe that one farm disappeared from the rent rolls, and another was buried by several feet of blown sand.

1756 - A storm separated Eachkamish from the remainder of Baleshare, North Uist, and caused so much sand drift that it buried the houses of the ``Farm Town of Balyshar'' up to their roofs, so that the people had to move.

1764 - A ``hurricane'' from the south-west coincided with a particularly high tide, and breached an isthmus at Eoligarry in Barra.

1811 - A survey estimated that 600 acres had been lost in the Uists and Barra by sand drift and marine incursions over the previous 200 years.